The Art of Messy

Prayers for Intentional Living

It always amazes me how busy life can be. Especially when you cut back on obligations and things get even more hectic. The last month I have found myself struggling to stay above water despite a lighter schedule. I’m sure the nicer weather has allowed more work. We have planted a garden and have several flower beds that need constant attention. Not to mention the grass that needs mowed…with a push mower… oh, and we have chickens! They were challenging at first, not staying in the yard, but we have all adjusted and now are pretty easy only requiring a few minutes a day of work. Plus, we are now benefiting from home grown eggs!

Of course, we have still been in school mode. We have officially begin our summer break today! Whoo hoo! I think we are both thankful. What a year it has been! Struggle after struggle, but we have both learned and grown in SO many ways. Wyatt is on a journey of his own with Vision Therapy, which is progressing. Not as fast as we have hoped, but we are making head way. I have grown as a homeschool mom. I have become more confident in what I know so that I can adapt our curriculum to best suit Wyatt for next year. I am actually very excited about what next year will bring with customizing our curriculum. We will be using Orton-Gillingham programs All About Reading and All About Spelling, Hand Writing Without Tears, Apologia Exploring Creation With Astronomy, Liberty Kids DVD series for History, and Grapevine Studies Creation to Jacob for Bible Study.

We have had lots of visitors this last month. We got to see Nicks sister and brother in law from Kansas and cousins from Virginia. The visits were brief, but enjoyed thoroughly.

Wyatt lost yet another tooth! That makes four!

We have done some major changes around the house. We took the giant planter box out and the window by the door. That made a huge difference!

I think we are done making our house a mess for a while, but we still need to clean up our relational messes.

Aren’t they sweet? Pictures can be deceiving. They bicker and rub each other the wrong way constantly. I’m hoping by the end of the summer we will be able to overcome the tension between these two and get them to understand that brothers and sisters love each other and that God knew what he was doing when he gave them both the privilege of being siblings. Despite disagreements that they may have over the years, my prayer is that they will best friends. Hey, life gets messy at times, but with love and forgiveness, Gods grace can be displayed and be a testimony for others.

This week we have VBS followed up with the 4th of July. After that we hope to finally revamp our family time. We really need to be better about spending time together and building relationships with our kids.Time gets away from us so quickly and it is easy for us get caught up in the day to day messes. We need to be more intentional about teaching them the Bible and training them up in the way they should go. While we talk about Gods Word throughout the day we are hit and miss with our nightly devotions and starting our day with Bible reading. It isn’t enough to just talk about it. We really need to show them how important it is for them to read and know exactly what the Bible says. We need to be that example to them as they grow.

Deuteronomy 6: 5-9 is so relevant to me. “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates.”

It is so important to hide Gods word in our hearts! Lord, help us do what is right in Your eyes, to devote our lives to You, and make the changes we need to be intentional with our time with each other. In Your Name, I pray. Amen.

Still looking…?

Still looking…?

What I’m Reading…

I am currently reading this with the Action Plan. I love that it tackles issues as a heart problem. It is parenting the heart. I LOVE this! Great tool to help parent the heart! I use it all the time!We are currently using this as our nightly devotional. It includes a lot of stories that are usually overlooked in other children Bibles and all point to Jesus.